Political Quotes

“The first place, my program for school choice was tried first in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A Democratic Mayor and a Democratic legislator, a woman named Polly Williams, decided something different had to happen there. Polly was told that her kid was dysfunctional, going to a lousy school. They worked out a choice program at the Milwaukee level. And her kid is now performing well. And the school that wasn't chosen is making itself better. The GI bill after World War II went to an individual soldier getting out of the armed service. He could choose public, private, or religious. That did not hurt the State universities. The same thing would be true with this plan. The answer to the socio-disadvantaged is to do what my program calls for: give them a stipend to choose whether they want a public school, fine; private school, fine; or religious school, fine. As you do that, you're going to find that the schools not chosen are going to better themselves. There's plenty of examples. Rochester, New York, has some of that. Milwaukee, I've already mentioned. So we ought to try it. And my program's called the ``GI bill'' for kids. It helps the kind of person that she properly was identifying with and talking about. I think we ought to try something new. Education and the control of the Congress are two things that haven't changed in years, and we ought to change both. Moderator. President Bush, as a followup to that, there are those, and you're well aware of it, who claim that this program of yours is flirting dangerously with the separation of church and state.”